Food Tank’s winter reading list encourages readers to reflect and meditate before choosing which mindful changes to make in today’s food system. Whether uncovering the art and stories of coffee culture, the politics of the meat industry, or the science of human health, this book list opens up possibilities for imagining and creating a healthier food system.
1. Accidentally on Purpose by Kristen Kish
In this New York Times bestseller Kristen Kish—the winner of Season 10 of “Top Chef,” who later went on to host the show—reflects on the path that led to her life on television today. Kish opens up about her childhood as an adoptee in the Midwest, her career in the kitchen, and the relationships and love she found along the way. And through her account of the accidents and missteps she navigated, she shows readers how she learned to find and use her voice.
2. Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy by Fabio Parasecoli
In Al Dente, readers travel through Italy’s foodscape, traversing its many regions and histories. The book documents a country that is home to a brilliant multitude of wines, cheeses, breads, vegetables and meats, while uncovering the reality of economic shifts, poor agricultural conditions, wars, and limited diets in Southern Italy until the 1950s. Parasecoli also includes an archive of recipes that celebrate the country’s food revolution.
3. Breadfruit: Three Global Journeys of a Bountiful Tree by Russell Fielding
The breadfruit tree, with origins in the Pacific Islands, has come to play a significant role in the diets of eaters on the African continent and in the Caribbean. In Breadfruit, Russell Fielding traces the journey of the breadfruit tree across these continents, and studies the colonial history and ecological adaptation that makes the tree and fruit what they are today. Fielding reveals how this single tree embodies resilience, sustenance, abundance, and the intricate ties between food and community.
4. Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly by Hannah Selinger
After gaining access to a life she never expected, lush with lavish parties and expensive wines, Hannah Selinger chronicles her exciting rise and imminent fall in the restaurant business. Cellar Rat begins in the grungy hometown pub where she first fell in love with the industry and ends in the Hamptons. This emotional journey follows the realities of what it takes for Selinger to either stay in something that no longer serves her or walk away.
5. Dark Laboratory: How Colonialism Shaped the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe
Tao Leigh Goffe digs into the roots of the climate crisis, analyzing how colonial systems of extraction, exploitation, and control have shaped today’s environment. Vivid storytelling and research connect past policies to present consequences in Dark Laboratory and highlight the ecological costs of today’s industrialized systems. But she also shows that there are alternative ways forward if we can learn from past mistakes and ground solutions in the knowledge gained from island ecosystems.
6. Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison by Leslie Soble with Alex Busansky and Aishatu R. Yusuf, based on research by Impact Justice
Eating Behind Bars exposes how food in United States prisons has become a quiet, powerful form of punishment. Drawing on groundbreaking research and firsthand accounts, the book reveals how nutrient-poor meals, privatized food contracts, and systemic neglect harm the health and dignity of people trapped in the carceral system. Centering food as a human right, the authors connect prison meals to broader themes like justice, while highlighting emerging efforts to infuse nourishment, accountability, and care into prisons.
7. Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World by Richard Sexton
Richard Sexton charts the precarious balance of global food systems, highlighting the tangled web of policy, supply chains, and environmental challenges that threaten access to nourishment worldwide. Food Fight shows how well-meaning regulations, climate pressures, and corporate interests collide, leaving communities vulnerable and hungry. Sexton brings together analysis and human stories and poses a reminder that behind every statistic is a person trying to feed themselves.
8. Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us by Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall, PhD
In Food Intelligence, Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall prove the complexity in the interplay between nutrition, science, and welsh health, and go on to explain that food has the power to both heal and harm. Readers have the chance to learn the truth from a nutrition-perspective about how our larger food environment shapes eating behaviors and the food choices we make every day. This book acts as a guide through floods of dietary advice and works to dispel myths about nutrition in a digestible read on food, diet, metabolism and healthy eating.
9. Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement by Hanna Garth (forthcoming February 2026)
After 12 years of ethnographic research, Hanna Garth wrote Food Justice Undone as a response to the question what is justice, really? Her studies prove that injustice in the food system can’t be healed by well-meaning, affluent, white activists coming into South Central Los Angeles without knowledge of the neighborhood. Its people, history, culture, economics, and foods are specific, nuanced, and deserve solutions tailored to the demographic. Most importantly, she insists, what is needed is structural change, not shifts in individual behavior.
10. Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand by Jeff Chu
Jeff Chu shares the crop of lessons he learned while working the land, and reveals how farming shapes understanding of labor, community, and nature. Chu’s teachers span time and species as he gains knowledge from worms, Chinese long beans, and even egrets. Good Soil is part memoir, part agricultural study, and follows the growth of a novice farmhand into a wise and connected grower. This story celebrates curiosity, humility, and the hard labor behind every harvest.
11. Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love: A Cookbook by Samin Nosrat
Good Things is a joyful guide to cooking, living, and connecting with ordinary ingredients and extraordinary humans. Author Samin Nosrat of the James Beard Award-winning New York Times Bestseller Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat fills her newest book with the joys of go-to recipes, cooking tips, and well-tested-techniques. Her attention to detail, radiant warmth, humor, and care for cooks of all experience levels bring to life a timeless book of food and love.
12. Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food by Bruce Friedrich
Meat looks at humans’ love of animal protein and asks whether it’s possible to fulfill eaters’ cravings while feeding the world more sustainably. In his new book Bruce Friedrich explores the history of raising animals for meat, the science of plant-based alternatives, and the economic and food security benefits of producing meat more efficiently. He argues that it’s not only possible to find a new way to satisfy demand for meat. It’s a necessity.
13. Native Food Plants of Texas: an Austin Forager’s Guide Based on Indigenous Knowledge by Cyrus Harp
An expert forager and scholar, Cypur Harp constructs a comprehensible guide to wild edible plants native to Texas—the same plants fed and aided Indigenous peoples for millennia. Native Food Plants of Texas will serve as a helpful resource for foragers, educators, students of traditional lifeways, looking to understand how humans have relied on nature for sustenance. Expressive and richly illustrated, this book is an essential introduction to many of North America’s wild plants.
14. Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within by Alishia McCullough
In this deeply personal exploration, Alishia McCullough examines the ways food, body, and culture intersect, revealing how nourishment extends far beyond the plate. McCullough gets to know emotional eating, disordered patterns, and cultural expectations so intimately, and writes about how our relationship with what we consume can shape who we see in the mirror. Personal experience stands strong in relation to ideas about embodiment, race, self-care, and an intentional connection with the many food stories that influence what and how we eat.
15. Revolutionary Science: The Struggle for Agroecology in the Americas by Bruce Jennings (forthcoming March 2026)
For generations, campesino communities relied on traditional farming systems in the Americas. Then, industrial agriculture spread and devastated lands, cultures, and any semblance of equality in farming. In Revolutionary Science, Bruce Jennings follows the Latin American scientists, farmers, Indigenous communities, and social movements building and shaping an ever-evolving science, agroecology. Jennings invites readers to investigate the science rooted in cultural respect while sifting through the stories of those who made it a conscious modern practice.
16. The Almond Paradox: Cracking Open the Politics of What Plants Need by Emily Reisman
Emily Reisman explores a vast contrast across continents between divergent ways of growing the plant that has stirred environmental controversy for years, the almond tree. Notorious for their water consumption and extractive neediness in California’s orchards, almond tree culture strikes a harmony in Spain where they thrive off rain. The Almond Paradox uplifts the importance of place-based knowledge while shedding light on the ways that the history of capitalism, science, land use, and policy have shaped our understanding of agriculture.
17. The Bottomless Cup by Kevin Boehm
The Bottomless Cup paints a complex picture of award-winning restaurateur Kevin Boehm’s life. He has won Michelin stars and Boka Restaurant Group, which he co-founded in 2002, is an incredible success. And he has worked alongside some of the top celebrity chefs. But along the way, Boehm endured a turbulent upbringing and navigated setbacks as he found his place in the world of hospitality. An eye-opening memoir The Bottomless Cup is filled with honesty and humor.
18. The Chesapeake Table: Your Guide to Eating Local by Renee Brooks Catacalos
Eating locally can feel like a challenge. But Renee Brooks Catacalos invites readers into the foodway of the Chesapeake, showing how eating close to home can be easier than expected, and deeply rewarding. Catacalos conducts her own experiments, sourcing from the Chesapeake Bay area, and returns home to write us this guide, illuminating the abundance directly in front of us. This celebration of neighbors and local foods is a call to engage more mindfully in our surrounding food system.
19. The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese: From Ancient Rome to Modern America by Karima Moyer-Nocchi
In the 18th century, macaroni and cheese was emblematic of sophistication among the English. During the American Civil Rights Movement, Black women helped establish the dish as an American tradition. Through this globe-traversing history, Karima Moyer-Nocchi traces the unexpected journey of macaroni and cheese. Moyer-Nocchi situates the dish within layered social, economic, and culinary landscapes, revealing how a simple combination of pasta and cheese reflects big historical moments like migratory movements and culinary innovations over the years.
20. Will This Make You Happy by Tanya Bush
In this narrative cookbook about desire and dessert, Tanya Bush weaves approachable baking recipes with inspiring tales of experimentation, pleasure, and self-discovery. She includes dishes like the cardamom cruller with plum drizzle, a sweet treat that goes through flavor changes per season, and a classic almond cake. Bush shares moments in Little Egg, a bright and bustling restaurant in New York City’s Brooklyn where she is the head pastry chef. Perfect for first time bakers and memoir-lovers, Will This Make You Happy is more than a book of recipes; it’s a love story.
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